the red & white and the green

the first time we ever spent time in the company of bikers was at the annual oakland hells angels saint patrick’s day party 9 long confusing years ago. through one mysterious means or another, we and two of our more belligerent colleagues of the time secured invitations. we still don’t understand how we went from talking about books with some elderly guy in a leather vest to tromping down high street en route to loud unknown things but sometimes its best not to ask to many questions.

now before we get ahead of ourselves, let us tell you this, as excited as our two cohorts and we were for this literal walk on the wild side, there was an undeniable nervousness, for none of us knew quite what we were walking into. after a long powwow over a bone, we decided that it would probably be best if we were armed. being a small posse of skinny loadies, we recognized that perhaps we were not really going to be up to the snuff for any potential hand to hand combat with the hells angels. we felt that any knives would be taken from us before we even could process them in our hands. so we did what we felt was the only prudent way to handle the weapon situation- we brought skateboards and figured we would go down swinging at least and that they would at least render us unconscious quickly.

all these fears were for naught dear readers. the president gave a speech about how no member was allowed to cause us any harm or duress as “these kids look like freaks, that’s how we use to look”, which is a loaded sort of compliment considering this was being said to a group of bikers with every sort of emblem of heavy freakdom bedecking their bodies, beards, babes and bikes. thus roughed with we were not. all members of our party were given shirts, stickers, nitrous oxide, beer, and front row seats to watch the grittiest strippers we have ever had the pleasure of seeing.

and that dear readers is the tale of our first time meeting the hells angels and one of our finest saint patrick’s days. it  also began a long and loose association with the hells angels we continue to enjoy to this very day.

all that said, may your beer be green, may you not vomit corn beef and cabbage on anyone, and may your drivers be designated.

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thoughts on time travel

we here at the offices of casual friday have been mulling over the darker sides of time travel and coming to terms with ones direct relationship to the snowballing of days into weeks into months into eventual years… it’s heavy business and not for the weak of heart, but really in life none of the interesting things are best suited for those of a fragile condition.

dear readers, the precise trouble with time is that it doesn’t just start and stop where you want it to. without the aid of psychedelic drugs or sorcery one cannot go from monday morning’s alarm clock to friday’s afternoon- or however the lodestar of your weekend works out. in this same vein one cannot jump from the moment you opened the dresser drawer filled with needles, tin foil, and your mail and then suddenly be on a roadtrip with your best friend some ten months later. the precise mechanics of the clock do not allow for these kinds of transgressions. it is amazing that in this day and age of such great technological magic and innovation that no one has sought to fix this problem of time…

we here at casual friday are mucking through the deep trenches of slowly expanding time and space. it has yet to achieve those qualities of a great numbing expanse, a gulf so wide it may as well be the ocean where communication is only possible through the frantically flickering of writs of semaphores on foreign shores. no time is still a young thing. not a helpless baby. time is more like a 10 year old boy. all knobby knees and bones like glass. time falls and hurts itself and we still feel the need to hold it. cry with it. we here at the offices of casual friday still share a visceral connection with time, it coats our hands like honey.

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